much cotton as he can in any other way before known and also cleanse it much better than in the usual mode.1 This machine may be turned by water or with a horse, with the greatest ease, and one man and a horse will do more than fifty men with the old machines. It makes the labor fifty times less, without throwing any class of People out of business.

I returned to the Northward for the purpose of having a machine made on a large scale and obtaining a Patent for the invintion. . . . How advantageous this business will eventually prove to me, I cannot say. It is generally said by those who know anything about it, that I shall make a Fortune by it. I have no expectation that I shall make an independent fortune by it, but think I had better pursue it than any other business into which I can enter. Something which cannot be foreseen may frustrate my expectations and defeat my Plan; but I am now so sure of success that ten thousand dollars, if I saw the money counted out to me, would not tempt me to give up my right and relinquish the object. I wish you, sir, not to show this letter nor communicate anything of its contents to any body except My Brothers and Sister, enjoining it on them to keep the whole a profound secret...

Mr. Eli Whitney.

With respects to Mama2 I am,

kind Parent, your most obt. Son Eli Whitney, Junr.

F. Effect of the Cotton Gin upon Export of Cotton, 1791-18113. As soon as it became possible to clean cotton quickly and cheaply, a rapidly growing export trade sprang up, most of it with England.

In 1790, the growth of American cotton wool was problematical. The extent to which the production of this raw material has been subsequently carried, enriched the nation, and very much contributed to lessen the demand for slaves. Prior to 1790, the Dutch settlements in Surinam, and other parts of the West Indies, were considered as the countries, from which the manufactories in the

1 In a letter to Jefferson, dated Nov. 24, 1793, Whitney stated that with this machine "it is the stated task of one negro to clean fifty weight (I mean fifty pounds after it is seperated from the seed), of the green seed cotton per day." Olmsted, Memoir of Eli Whitney, Esq., p. 17.

2 Eli Whitney's step-mother. His own mother died while he was still a young lad.

United States might be supplied with cotton wool. In 1791, the first parcel of cotton, of American growth, was exported from the United States, and amounted only to 19,200 lbs.! The cotton wool of the growth of the United States, exported in 1809-10, amounted to 93,361,462 lbs.; besides, in that year, it has been estimated that 16,000,000 lbs. were consumed in our manufactories. Calculated on the average of the six years, from 1806 to 1811, there was annually imported into Great Britain from the United States, 34,568,487 lbs.1 and in 1811, 46,872,452 lbs. Calculated on the average of the five years, from 1805 to 1809, there was annually imported into Great Britain from all parts of the world, 69,181,885 lbs.2 In 1755, the cotton manufacture, in England, was ranked "amongst the humblest of the domestic arts;" the products of this branch, were then almost entirely for home consumption; in 1797, it took the lead of all the other manufactures in Great Britain, and in 1809, gave employment to 800,000 persons, and its annual value was estimated at £30,000,000 sterling, or 132,000,000 dollars!

G. Agriculture in the Carolinas and Georgia, 18023

The decline in the profitableness of indigo and tobacco had brought the agriculture of this section into a transitional period of its development. If the cotton gin had not been invented they might have developed mixed farming. As it was, however, South Carolina and Georgia turned eagerly to this new crop, and in 1801 produced three quarters of all that was grown in the United States, the remainder coming from North Carolina and Virginia. In South Carolina, rice was still cultivated, though not so generally.

The two Carolinas and Georgia are naturally divided into the upper and lower countries, but the upper embraces a greater extent. . . .

Through the whole of the country the nature of the soil is adapted for the growth of wheat, rye, and Indian corn. Good land produces upward of twenty bushels of Indian wheat per acre, which is commonly worth about half a dollar per bushel. A general consumption is made of it for the support of the inhabitants since, except those who are of German origin, there are very few, as we have before remarked, that make use of wheaten bread. The growth of corn is very cir

1 Naval Chronicle, for 1811, p. 281.

2 Monthly Magazine, vol. xxx, p. 115. In 1705, only 1,170,881 lbs. of cotton wool were imported into England. In 1810, Sir Robert Peel stated, in the House of Commons, that 135,000,000 lbs. had been imported that year!

Travels to the Westward of the Allegany Mountains. By F. A. Michaux (London, 1805), 278, 288.

cumscribed, and the small quantity of flour that is exported to Charleston and Savannah is sold fifteen per cent. cheaper than that imported from Philadelphia.

The low price to which tobacco is fallen in Europe within these few years, has made them give up the culture of it in this part of the country. That of green-sea cotton has resumed its place, to the great advantage of the inhabitants, many of whom have since made their fortunes by it. The separation of the seed from the felt that envelops them is a tedious operation, and which requires many hands, is now simplified by a machine for which the inventor has obtained a patent from the federal government. . . .

The best rice plantations are established in the great swamps, that favour the watering of them when convenient. The harvests are abundant there, and the rice that proceeds from them, stripped of its husk, is larger, more transparent, and is sold dearer than that which is in a drier soil, where they have not the means or facility of irrigation. The culture of rice in the southern and maritime part of the United States has greatly diminished within these few years; it has been in a great measure replaced by that of cotton, which affords greater profit to the planters, since they compute a good cotton harvest equivalent to two of rice. The result is, that many rice fields have been transformed into those of cotton, avoiding as much as possible the water penetrating.

III. SLAVERY

A. Poor Whites and Slaves in Virginia, 17801

The position of the poor white, in a community where most of the labor was performed by negro slaves, was a difficult one, and the problem to which it gave rise became more important in a later period. But even at this earlier date, his lot in a state like Virginia could arouse the attention of an intelligent and sympathetic observer like Chastellux. This writer was a French officer who served in the Revolution.

... But if Reason ought to blush at beholding such prejudices so strongly established amongst a new people, Humanity has still more to suffer from the state of poverty, in which a great number of white people lives in Virginia. It is in this country that I saw poor persons, for the first time, after I passed the sea; for, in the midst of those rich plantations, where the negro alone is wretched, miserable huts are often to be met with, inhabited by whites, whose wane looks,

1 Travels in North America, in the Years 1780, 1781, and 1782. By the Marquis [F. J.] Chastellux (London, 1787), 190–9.

and ragged garments, bespeak poverty. At first I was puzzled to explain to myself, how, in a country where there is still so much land to clear, men who do not refuse to work should remain in misery; but I have since learned, that all these useless territories, these immense estates, with which Virginia is covered, have their proprietors. Nothing is more common than to see some of them possessing five or six thousand acres of land, who clear out only as much as their negroes can cultivate; yet will they not give, or even sell the smallest portion of them, because they form a part of their possessions, and they are in hopes of one day augmenting the number of their negroes. These white men, without fortune, and frequently without industry, are straitened, therefore, on every side, and reduced to the small number of acres they are able to acquire. Now, the land not being good in general in America, especially in Virginia, a considerable number of them is necessary, in order to clear it with success, because they are the cattle from which the cultivator derives his aid and his subsistence. To the eastward are a great number of cleared grounds, but the portions of land which are easily purchased there, and for almost nothing, consist always of at least two hundred acres; besides, that to the southward, the climate is less healthy, and the new settlers, without partaking of the wealth of Virginia, share all the inconveniences of the climate, and even the indolence it inspires.

Beneath this class of inhabitants we must place the negroes, whose situation would be still more lamentable, did not their natural insensibility extenuate, in some degree, the sufferings annexed to slavery. On seeing them ill-lodged, ill-cloathed, and often oppressed with labour, I concluded that their treatment was as rigorous as elsewhere. I have been assured, however, that it is extremely mild, in comparison with what they suffer in the sugar colonies;

I must likewise do the Virginians the justice to declare, that many of them treat their negroes with great humanity. I must add, likewise, a still more honourable testimony, that in general they seem afflicted to have any slavery, and are constantly talking of abolishing it, and of contriving some other means of cultivating their estates. It is true that this opinion, which is almost generally received, is inspired by different motives. The philosophers, and the young men, who are almost all educated in the principles of a sound philosophy, regard nothing but justice and the rights of humanity. The fathers of families, and such as are principally occupied with schemes of interest, complain that the maintenance of their negroes is very expensive; that their labour is neither so productive nor so

cheap, as that of day labourers, or white servants; and, lastly, that epidemical disorders, which are very common, render both their property and their revenue extremely precarious.

B. Decline of Slavery, 17881

Owing to the impossibility of employing slave labor in the staple industries of the north, slavery was gradually dying out in that section. Even in the south, with the decline in the profitableness of tobacco, there was a growing movement in favor of abolition. Brissot's liberal philosophy and horror of the institution of slavery led him at times into doubtful generalizations.

Three distinct epochs mark the conduct of the Americans in this business the prohibition of the importation of slaves - their manumission and the provision made for their instruction. All the different States are not equally advanced in these three objects.

In the Northern and Middle States, they have proscribed for ever the importation of slaves; in others, this prohibition is limited to a certain time. In South Carolina, where it was limited to three years, it has lately been extended to three years more. Georgia is the only State that continues to receive transported slaves. . .

Slavery, my friend, has never polluted every part of the United States. There was never any law in New Hampshire, or Massachusetts, which authorized it. When, therefore, those States proscribed it, they only declared the law as it existed before. There was very little of it in Connecticut; the puritanic austerity which predominated in that colony, could scarcely reconcile itself with slavery. Agriculture was better performed there by the hands of freemen; and everything concurred to engage the people to give liberty to the slaves: so that almost everyone has freed them; and the children of such as are not yet free, are to have their liberty at twenty-five years of age.

The case of the Blacks in New-York is nearly the same; yet the slaves there are more numerous.

It is because the basis of the population there is Dutch; that is to say, people less disposed than any other to part with their property. But liberty is assured there to all the children of the slaves, at a certain age. The State of Rhode-Island formerly made a great business of the slave trade. It is now totally and for ever prohibited.

In New Jersey the bulk of the population is Dutch. You find there, traces of that same Dutch spirit which I have described. Yet

1 New Travels in the United States of America, performed in 1788. By J. P. Brissot de Warville (Dublin, 1792), 270-81, passim.